Showing posts with label Open Thread. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Open Thread. Show all posts

Saturday, October 14, 2023

Fixed Disqus Commenting In Subrealism's Non-Standard Layout/Theme Open Thread

 
So, it's been months since Disqus would function normally when/if you clicked on a post. Comments which haven't been abundant since the heyday a decade ago have since utterly died.  This morning I finally rolled up my sleeves and manually reinserted disqus into the old-fangled site html and it should now be functioning normally in all formats and all browsers including mobile.  Didn't wind up losing anything so I'll count it a win. 

Hopefully, with the world about to burst into flames - diehards will have a thing or two to say about a thing or two over the next few days.



Wednesday, February 08, 2023

How Did The Official Response To Covid Affect YOU?

michaelpsenger  |  The scars that have been left on all of us by the response to COVID are incomprehensibly varied and deep. For most, there hasn’t been enough time to mentally process the significance of the initial lockdowns, let alone the years-long slog of mandates, terror, propaganda, social stigmatization and censorship that followed. And this psychological trauma affects us in myriad ways that leave us wondering what it is about life that just feels so off versus how it felt in 2019.

For those who were following the real data, the statistics were always horrifying. Trillions of dollars rapidly transferred from the world’s poorest to the richest. Hundreds of millions hungry. Countless years of educational attainment lost. An entire generation of children and adolescents robbed of some of their brightest years. A mental health crisis affecting more than a quarter of the population. Drug overdoses. Hospital abuse. Elder abuse. Domestic abuse. Millions of excess deaths among young people which couldn’t be attributed to the virus.

But underneath these statistics lie billions of individual human stories, each unique in its details and perspectives. These individual stories and anecdotes are only just beginning to surface, and I believe that hearing them is a vital step in processing everything that we’ve experienced over the past three years.

I recently sent out a query on Twitter as to how people had been affected by the response to COVID at an individual level. The conversation that emerged is a luminating and haunting reflection of what each of us experienced over the past three years.

Sunday, September 11, 2022

Military Doesn't Want You Seeing Any More Of Its UFO/UAP Videos

vice  |  The U.S. Navy says that releasing any additional UFO videos would “harm national security” and told a government transparency website that all of the government’s UFO videos are classified information. 

In a Freedom of Information Act request response, the Navy told government transparency site The Black Vault that any public dissemination of new UFO videos “will harm national security as it may provide adversaries valuable information regarding Department of Defense/Navy operations, vulnerabilities, and/or capabilities. No portions of the videos can be segregated for release.”

The Black Vault was seeking all videos “with the designation of ‘unidentified aerial phenomena.’” This is an interesting response from the Navy because, often, military agencies will issue a so-called GLOMAR response, where they neither confirm nor deny that the records (in this case videos) exist, and refuse to say anything more. In this response, the Navy is admitting that it has more videos, and also gives a rationale for releasing three previous UFO videos.

“While three UAP videos were released in the past, the facts specific to those three videos are unique in that those videos were initially released via unofficial channels before official release,” it said. “Those events were discussed extensively in the public domain; in fact, major news outlets conducted specials on these events. Given the amount of information in the public domain regarding these encounters, it was possible to release the files without further damage to national security.”

It’s true that the three videos—which were leaked to former Blink-182 singer Tom DeLonge and the New York Times—didn’t originally come out via official means. But in recent years, the Pentagon has regularly talked about UFOs, and earlier this year it showed additional clips from UFOs to Congress. The military has seemingly wanted to tell the public and Congress that UFOs are very much real and a threat, and that it needs more funding to determine what they are and, perhaps, protect us against them. But it continues to hold the videos close to the vest.

Saturday, August 13, 2022

When The Power Goes Out At The Club And You Gotta Drop Your Own Beats...,

pureflamencobarcelona  |  She was born in a shack in the Somorrostro. Her father was Francisco Amaya “El Chino”, a poor guitarist who played in taverns day and night to earn a living. When she was only four years old she started going out at night with her father to help him. She was just a little gypsy girl by then. Her father played the guitar and Carmen danced and singed. After that, they asked for money or took the coins that the audience have thrown to the floor. At the same time, she appeared in some theatres which lacked any prestige. José Sampere, a businessman, was the first one in being interested on her and took her to the most known Spanish Theatre of Barcelona. However, the problem was that she wasn’t allowed to work legally due to her age so the officially date of birth may not be the real one according to some researches about the artist. Her name appeared for the first time printed in the Expo Barcelona 1929 thanks to Sebastián Gash, a sharp critic who watched her and talked about her in the weekly newspaper Mirador: “Imagine a 14 years old gypsy sitting in a chair on the tablao, Carmencita remained impassive, statuary, noble with a racial elegance, inscrutable, absent, not paying attention of what is happening around her, alone with her inspiration, with a very hieratic actitude to allow her soul to raise until inaccessible areas. And suddenly, a jump. And the gypsy dances. Indescribable. Soul. Pure sole. The feeling made real. Movements of twist in right angle, pure geometry.

In that time also Vicente Escudero watched her dancing and said that Carmen Amaya will make a revolution in the flamenco dance because she mixed two styles: the old female dancer and the frenetic foot tapping of the male dancers. In 1935 she was hired by Carcellé who presented her in the Coliseum in Madrid. That was maybe her only national recognition. The world of cinema also noticed her. She performed a small role in La hija de Juan Simón. Later, she worked in María de la O, along with Pastora Imperio.

The 18th July 1936 Carmen and her family were in the Zorrilla Theatre in Valladolid working in the company of Carcellé. In that moment their economy was in good shape and they bought their first car. They had to go to Lisbon to enforce a contract but the car was confiscated and they couldn’t go there until November. After some setbacks they embarked to America in a ship that took 15 days to cross the Atlantic. They arrived to Buenos Aires and the triumph of Carmen Amaya and her family went beyond expectations.

They went there just for four weeks and stayed there nine months due to the fact that every time that Carmen performed in the theatre a lot of people attended and the tickets were sold two months before the show. As a proof of the popularity of the artist in the South-American country we can find a theatre with her own name: the Theatre Amaya.

In America Carmen Amaya met a lot of famous people of her time. She was in Hollywood a couple of times filming some movies and the cinema, music and culture celebrities wanted to watch her dancing. The musician Toscanini went to watch her once and said that he had never seen an artist with that rhythm and fire before. She was constantly improvising. Her compass was solid and she possessed a prodigious sense of the rhythm with a rigorous tempo that was exact in all her movements. Anyone has ever span like her, so fast and perfect. In America she met Roosevelt, the president of the United States and in Europe she even met the Queen of England.

She didn’t come back to Spain until 1947 and she did it as a worldwide star. Her stay in America turned her into a professional and famous artist. Lot of stories hard to believe were told about her as the anecdote of the fried fish in the luxury suite of the Waldorf Astoria.

In that time her flamenco dance was the best one. She stood out not only for her art but also for the wonderful personality that won everyone she met. She was also very generous. It seems that during her stay in America the dancer had a sentimental relationship with Sabicas who declared before his death he dated Carmen for nine years and they broke up in Mexico.

In 1952 she married the guitarist Juan Antonio Agüero, a member of her company, a man from a distinguished family from Santander who wasn’t gypsy. They lived an authentic love story, with an intimate wedding. In 1959 Carmen lived another exiting moment in her life when the ceremony of the inauguration of the fountain Carmen Amaya was celebrated in the seafront promenade in Barcelona located in the neighbourhood Somorrostro, the same fountain and the same place she lived in as a child years before. The last ten years of her life she was surrounded of lots of people and almost sanctified, not only by the audience but also by her colleagues. Her genius was instinctive, wild, far from the academic styles. When she performed for the last time in Madrid, Carmen Amaya was deathly sick; she had a renal failure that stopped the elimination of toxins from her body. The doctors couldn’t find any solution to her problem.

The sickness made worse in the filming of “Los Tarantos” in the spring of 1963. She had to dance barefoot with an unbearable cold. She always put on her coat when the filming stopped and they didn’t repeat any scene. Despite these drawbacks, Carmen remained strong and began the summer tour. However, the 8th of August while she was working in Gandía, Carmen didn’t finish her performance. She was performing when suddenly she said to Batista: “Andrés, let’s finish”.

That was the end of the dancer Carmen Amaya, who got inspiration from the street, the family and the gypsy blood and revolutionized the flamenco dance. With her way of dancing, Carmen Amaya showed that for her the flamenco was feeling, soul and passion. Her dancer came from the anger and the violence retained with an amazing speed and strength. Still today she is a model of the flamenco dance.

Even if Carmen is remembered for her dance she also sang. In fact, her father thought at first that she was better in singing than in dancing. She had a dark and hoarse voice, typical of the gypsy sing. A good example of her way of singing can be seen in “La reina del embrujo gitano”. Recordings on slate records 1948-1950 collects a good sample of her abilities as a flamenco singer, accompanied by two guitarists from her dynasty, Paco and José Amaya, as does “En familia”.

Thursday, January 27, 2022

The Menticide Manual - Open Thread

thesaker |  Since it is impossible to change the terms of breeding, we must accept there will always be different rules for different classes of humans.

Do not believe in anything they are telling you about equality or democracy. In America and Europe, if you have superior pedigree or test an IQ above 135, you are exempt from homework, tests and schools. Those mindless activities are for the serfs. You get your audition with the master breeders and they’ll make things happen. Think of it as diplomatic clearance. There are no barriers and no checks.

Also, there is less bureaucracy. If a university or school wants you, they will fabricate a reason, don’t worry. Like a sports stipend or a fake prize, a large family donation or a fat recommendation letter. In Chile and Argentina I hear they call this corruption ‘getting a fast-pass’, as in ‘a fast-pass for American Disneyland’. It means that you can skip the lines and that long waiting hours do not apply to you. I like that. I will use ‘fast-pass’ from now on.

In China, there is a fast-pass system called bao-song (package-sent). It means forget school and grades, this kid you must admit. It comes with a minor catch though. The student cannot choose his major, the state does. As if his family cared. But this sounds very British, doesn’t it? In good-old Oxbridge, it doesn’t really matter what subject you master in, as long as you get… your Master. Every nation has its fast-pass lane.

After centuries of selection, most breeders encounter severe defects and inadequacies in their stock. Oh forces of darkness. In one old German castle town’s youth hostel, the masters stop-watched us candidates recite pointless word-lists and tested us for reaction time and unnatural pathology and thought-crime. In a Chinese university, they passed around a tape measure and measured our head circumference, because for some reasons the masters believed that head-size mattered and that 24 5/8 inches meant that you needed your caps custom-made.

Who could forget such an examination? If you stroll the campuses of Todai or Beida,… you have never seen so many large heads in one place. They look like aliens. Can’t be made unseen. This is the result of excessive over-breeding. Same at Harvard University. Have you ever seen the head-sizes of Ted Kennedy or Noam Chomsky?

All our nation‘s top mental clinics and laboratories are adjunct to our top universities. The master breeders suffer from the worst mental abnormalities and defects, from horrible misanthropy to psychopathy. Then there is the plague of schisms with these people. Schismatic persons can easily turn into traitors and backstabbers. Like Leon Trotsky or Leo Tolstoy.

There is also a lot of old money corruption, because degenerates like our Karl-Theodor pay a lot of money to get into top universities, but are unintelligent.

All these details and head-scratching at the top levels goes over the heads of the general population. The general population is abused six ways from Sunday. For example, the elite sociopaths tell the general population through literature and media and the education system that the working and underclasses surely are the most debauched. But that cannot be true, if you really think about it: First, the working classes are too busy working. Next, nine tenths of the general population have only access to one tenth of all females. The rulers may be fewer in numbers, but they own everything, and they are the worst abusers, torturers and tyrants – by far and in between.

The sociopaths that rule us are the most unimaginably cruelest and most abusive towards all human beings, but especially towards women, children and the pure and healthy races, who are completely unaware of the master breeders’ satanic schemes. The majority of the people do not grasp the human hierarchy and their own enslavement. They are stuck in evolution like chimpanzees or zebras. 

Fist tap Dale.

Tuesday, November 30, 2021

Negroe History Courtesy Bloomberg Philanthropies: What Could Go Wrong Open Thread

NPR  |  Anyone who's been to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture will speak of its elevator ride through time, which takes visitors from the present day to the 15th century and kicks off the first exhibit, Slavery & Freedom. With the launch of a new virtual platform, visitors can now travel on the elevator down to that exhibit without ever leaving their homes.

The Searchable Museum, launched Thursday, transforms the artifacts, stories, and interactive experiences of the physical exhibit into a digital platform where museumgoers can take it in at their own pace.

Eventually, the museum plans to bring all of its exhibits online. The next exhibit, Making a Way Out of No Way, will go online this spring.

"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived — but if faced with courage, need not be lived again, " echoes Angelou's voice as a video plays, showing images from the past 600 years of Black history.

While nothing quite matches seeing or touching certain artifacts in person, the digital museum will provide an inside look into some previously off-limits areas. Visitors can, for the first time, go inside the Point of Pines Slave Cabin, one of two remaining slave cabins on Edisto Island, South Carolina, with a 3-D virtual tour.

Unlike other Smithsonian museums, the NMAAHC has required timed-entry passes to enter the site almost exclusively since it opened in 2016. Though these timed tickets are still free of charge, they can be snapped up pretty quickly: Many tickets for December have already been claimed. (During the pandemic, plenty of Smithsonians have followed suit, requiring timed entry passes to avoid overcrowding.)

The virtual project has new elements, like videos, podcasts, and behind-the-scenes looks at the research behind the exhibits. One section, called "Lesser-Known Stories," captures stories that have been largely ignored throughout history — like the story of Nathan "Nearest" Green, the first known Black master distiller, who taught Jack Daniel how to make Tennessee whiskey; or the story of the largest known mass suicide of enslaved people, an act of resistance at Igbo Landing.

"This ongoing project provides a chance for Americans to realize our shared past, bringing the unique museum experience to their homes and on their phones," Kevin Young, the museum's director said in a press release. "Allowing the public to virtually revisit the originating struggle for American freedom in the 'Slavery and Freedom' exhibition reminds us of the centrality of the African American journey to the American experience—a story of triumph, resilience and joy over the centuries."

The site will also include links to related content elsewhere online, like a time-lapsed video of more than 31,000 slave ships during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, between 1514 and 1860.

"This is just the start," Young told The Washington Post. "We're looking right now at phase two and stories we can tell next."

 

Saturday, May 15, 2021

Wow, That Sounds Like A Really Good Deal, How Bout I Give You The Finger?

 cdc | If you’ve been fully vaccinated:

  • You can resume activities that you did prior to the pandemic.
  • You can resume activities without wearing a mask or staying 6 feet apart, except where required by federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial laws, rules, and regulations, including local business and workplace guidance.
  • If you travel in the United States, you do not need to get tested before or after travel or self-quarantine after travel.
  • You need to pay close attention to the situation at your international destination before traveling outside the United States.
    • You do NOT need to get tested before leaving the United States unless your destination requires it.
    • You still need to show a negative test result or documentation of recovery from COVID-19 before boarding an international flight to the United States.
    • You should still get tested 3-5 days after international travel.
    • You do NOT need to self-quarantine after arriving in the United States.
  • If you’ve been around someone who has COVID-19, you do not need to stay away from others or get tested unless you have symptoms.
    • However, if you live or work in a correctional or detention facility or a homeless shelter and are around someone who has COVID-19, you should still get tested, even if you don’t have symptoms.

Sunday, May 02, 2021

Paradise Within Reach - But Billions Of Y'all Gotta Go, Gotta Go, Gotta Go!!!

NYTimes |  As medical and social advances mitigate diseases of old age and prolong life, the number of exceptionally long-lived people is increasing sharply. The United Nations estimates that there were about 95,000 centenarians in 1990 and more than 450,000 in 2015. By 2100, there will be 25 million. Although the proportion of people who live beyond their 110th birthday is far smaller, this once-fabled milestone is also increasingly common in many wealthy nations. The first validated cases of such “supercentenarians” emerged in the 1960s. Since then, their global numbers have multiplied by a factor of at least 10, though no one knows precisely how many there are. In Japan alone, the population of supercentenarians grew to 146 from 22 between 2005 and 2015, a nearly sevenfold increase. 

Given these statistics, you might expect that the record for longest life span would be increasing, too. Yet nearly a quarter-century after Calment’s death, no one is known to have matched, let alone surpassed, her 122 years. The closest was an American named Sarah Knauss, who died at age 119, two years after Calment. The oldest living person is Kane Tanaka, 118, who resides in Fukuoka, Japan. Very few people make it past 115. (A few researchers have even questioned whether Calment really lived as long as she claimed, though most accept her record as legitimate based on the weight of biographical evidence.)

As the global population approaches eight billion, and science discovers increasingly promising ways to slow or reverse aging in the lab, the question of human longevity’s potential limits is more urgent than ever. When their work is examined closely, it’s clear that longevity scientists hold a wide range of nuanced perspectives on the future of humanity. Historically, however — and somewhat flippantly, according to many researchers — their outlooks have been divided into two broad camps, which some journalists and researchers call the pessimists and the optimists. Those in the first group view life span as a candle wick that can burn for only so long. They generally think that we are rapidly approaching, or have already reached, a ceiling on life span, and that we will not witness anyone older than Calment anytime soon.

In contrast, the optimists see life span as a supremely, maybe even infinitely elastic band. They anticipate considerable gains in life expectancy around the world, increasing numbers of extraordinarily long-lived people — and eventually, supercentenarians who outlive Calment, pushing the record to 125, 150, 200 and beyond. Though unresolved, the long-running debate has already inspired a much deeper understanding of what defines and constrains life span — and of the interventions that may one day significantly extend it.

The theoretical limits on the length of a human life have vexed scientists and philosophers for thousands of years, but for most of history their discussions were largely based on musings and personal observations. In 1825, however, the British actuary Benjamin Gompertz published a new mathematical model of mortality, which demonstrated that the risk of death increased exponentially with age. Were that risk to continue accelerating throughout life, people would eventually reach a point at which they had essentially no chance of surviving to the next year. In other words, they would hit an effective limit on life span.

Instead, Gompertz observed that as people entered old age, the risk of death plateaued. “The limit to the possible duration of life is a subject not likely ever to be determined,” he wrote, “even should it exist.” Since then, using new data and more sophisticated mathematics, other scientists around the world have uncovered further evidence of accelerating death rates followed by mortality plateaus not only in humans but also in numerous other species, including rats, mice, shrimp, nematodes, fruit flies and beetles.

In 2016, an especially provocative study in the prestigious research journal Nature strongly implied that the authors had found the limit to the human life span. Jan Vijg, a geneticist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and two colleagues analyzed decades’ worth of mortality data from several countries and concluded that although the highest reported age at death in these countries increased rapidly between the 1970s and 1990s, it had failed to rise since then, stagnating at an average of 114.9 years. Human life span, it seemed, had arrived at its limit. Although some individuals, like Jeanne Calment, might reach staggering ages, they were outliers, not indicators of a continual lengthening of life.

The Hardest Choices Require The Strongest Wills

scitechdaily |  In a paper published today (January 13, 2021) in the journal Frontiers in Conservation Science, the researchers cite more than 150 scientific studies and conclude, “That we are already on the path of a sixth major extinction is now scientifically undeniable.”

Among the paper’s co-authors is Daniel Blumstein, a UCLA professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and member of the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability.

Because too many people have underestimated the severity of the crisis and have ignored experts’ warnings, scientists must continue speaking out, said Blumstein, author of the 2020 book “The Nature of Fear: Survival Lessons from the Wild” — but they also must avoid either sugarcoating the overwhelming challenges or inducing feelings of despair.

“Without fully appreciating and broadcasting the scale of the problems and the enormity of the solutions required, society will fail to achieve even modest sustainability goals, and catastrophe will surely follow,” he said. “What we are saying is frightening, but we must be both candid and vocal if humanity is to understand the enormity of the challenges we face in creating a sustainable future.”

The Earth has experienced five mass extinctions, each accounting for a loss of more than 70% of all species on the planet. The most recent was 66 million years ago. Now, the paper reports, projected temperature increases and other human assaults on the environment mean that approximately 1 million of the planet’s 7 million to 10 million species are threatened with extinction in the coming decades.

Blumstein said that level of damage could occur within the next several decades; an extinction affecting as many as 70% of all species — like the earlier mass extinctions cited in the paper — could potentially occur within the next few centuries.

One of the major trends discussed in the paper is the explosive growth of the planet’s human population. There are now 7.8 billion people, more than double the Earth’s population just 50 years ago. And by 2050, the figure is likely to reach 10 billion, the scientists write, which would cause or exacerbate numerous serious problems. For example, more than 700 million people are starving and more than 1 billion are malnourished already; both figures are likely to increase as the population grows.

Population growth also greatly increases the risk for pandemics, the authors write, because most new infectious diseases result from human–animal interactions, humans live closer to wild animals than ever before and wildlife trade is continuing to increase significantly. Population growth also contributes to rising unemployment and, when combined with a hotter Earth, leads to more frequent and intense flooding and fires, poorer water and air quality, and worsening human health.

 

Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Open Thread On Fred - WHAT HAPPENED?!?!?!

stlouisfed | Source: Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (US)  

Release: H.6 Money Stock Measures  

Units:  Billions of Dollars, Seasonally Adjusted

Frequency:  Monthly

Before May 2020, M1 consists of (1) currency outside the U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve Banks, and the vaults of depository institutions; (2) demand deposits at commercial banks (excluding those amounts held by depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign banks and official institutions) less cash items in the process of collection and Federal Reserve float; and (3) other checkable deposits (OCDs), consisting of negotiable order of withdrawal, or NOW, and automatic transfer service, or ATS, accounts at depository institutions, share draft accounts at credit unions, and demand deposits at thrift institutions.

Beginning May 2020, M1 consists of (1) currency outside the U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve Banks, and the vaults of depository institutions; (2) demand deposits at commercial banks (excluding those amounts held by depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign banks and official institutions) less cash items in the process of collection and Federal Reserve float; and (3) other liquid deposits, consisting of OCDs and savings deposits (including money market deposit accounts). Seasonally adjusted M1 is constructed by summing currency, demand deposits, and OCDs (before May 2020) or other liquid deposits (beginning May 2020), each seasonally adjusted separately.

For more information on the H.6 release changes and the regulatory amendment that led to the creation of the other liquid deposits component and its inclusion in the M1 monetary aggregate, see the H.6 announcements and Technical Q&As posted on December 17, 2020.

Suggested Citation:

Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (US), M1 Money Stock [M1SL], retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1SL, April 27, 2021.

Sunday, April 25, 2021

It's Not An Accident That Neither Policing Or BLM Is Transparent Or Accountable

 

About those "rulers of BLM" - Never forget that Obama is the poster child and his cousin Warren Buffett is the money behind Black Lives Matter. Once you understand these basic facts, you can transcend the useless idiocy of talking in terms of "left" and "right", communist, fascist, conservative, progressive, etc..., rather, you can maintain laser-focus on who is doing the behavior and what their concrete-specific objectives can be discovered to be.

There is, however, another version of events, in which the heartfelt dedication to racial justice is only the forward-facing side of a more complicated movement. Behind the street level activism and emotional outpouring is a calculated machinery built by establishment money and power that has seized on racial politics, in which some of the biggest capitalists in the world are financially backing a group of self-described “trained Marxists”—a label that Cullors enthusiastically applies to herself and the group’s other co-founders. These bedfellows, whose stories and fortunes are never publicly presented as related, are in reality intertwined under the umbrella of a fiscal sponsor named the International Development Exchange. A modestly endowed West Coast nonprofit with origins in the Peace Corps—which for decades supported local farmers, shepherds, and agricultural workers across the Global South—IDEX has, in the past six years, been transformed into two distinct new things: the infrastructure back end to the Black Lives Matter organization in the United States and also, at the very same time, an investment fund vehicle driven by recruited MBAs and finance experts seeking to leverage decades of on-the-ground grantee relationships for novel forms of potentially problematic lending instruments . And it did so with help from the family of one of the most famous American billionaires in history—the Oracle of Omaha himself.
About the police, as currently configured, these economic burdens have been determined to be obsolete and a decision has been taken to do away with their current barely governable configuration. Part of the War on Drugs was to keep cops from policing their own neighborhoods. Even if they live in the city they serve, they cannot work in the jurisdiction they live in, as it may create a conflict of interest. Police not knowing residents is policy, not accident.

Many police, firefighters/EMTs, and other city employees do not live in the cities that employ them. As the ratio of local residents working for a city steadily declines, so does the performance of that city’s government. It’s a terrible situation, made demonstrably worse by state laws that struck down residency requirements for city employees statewide, in contravention of home rule guarantees. State preemption of local control is destroying municipal governments throughout numerous states. Again, this is a matter of policy, not accident.

With the military, it seems odd that progressives are just now waking up to the idea that an all-volunteer force somehow may mysteriously end up with a disproportionate number of right-wing members. Maybe we have a similar phenomenon with police. So I would suggest a draft not only for the military but also for local police. Everyone at a young age should experience one or the other, or maybe both, for a few years. Then perhaps we could have informed discussions and dispense with most of the righteous ranting.

We should also dispassionately consider how dangerous a police officer’s job actually is – compared to a truck driver, carpenter, farmer and host of other jobs…. hint, you will find that a cops level of danger in their job does not make the top ten list. And as for stopping crime, the police are really, really bad at it. According to FBI stats, only 4% of major crimes reported to police end in someone being convicted of a crime and only half of all major crimes are reported. Again, this is a matter of policy, not accident.

If we are actually concerned with public safety, with crime control, with having a public institution who’s mandate is actually to serve and protect the citizenry, then we need to design a whole new system from the ground up. Trying to reform the policing system we have into doing what we want it to do is doomed to fail. We need to start with a system that is accountable to the populace it serves, and that is designed specifically to provide security to that populace. We should not waste another moment trying to reform a system that was designed for entirely different purposes than to protect and serve the public.

So all the soap opera and machismo pushed by cops – that their job is so tough and dangerous – reduces to mush when held to the light of evidence. Continuing in that vein, by and large, police officers are exceptionally well-paid for the minimal qualifications required to get the job. Moreover, there are the power and prestige attractions associated with being narratized as heroic first responders and all that folderal. When you take into consideration official overtime pay, and the pay available for moonlighting, policing is one of the few remaining occupations in which a certain demographic with nothing more than a high-school diploma can realistically achieve a 6 figure income. Again, this is a matter of policy, not accident.

This is why police have so little difficulty parting with the 6-8% annual vigorish to their “fraternal orders”. The fraternal lodges are the real command and control systems for police departments. The chief of police is typically a bureaucratic figurehead whose job it is to run interference with politicians – and to a limited degree – the public.

In the interest of supporting citations – I offer the following link - but recommend a google search on – fop brad lemon tow lot scandal

This is a wonderful mid-sized urban anecdote of most of the moving parts involved with the structure of power, prestige, and accountability in contemporary policing. Abusive policing is concentrated among a relatively small proportion of police officers. The majority of U.S. police probably spend their entire careers without any incidence of corruption or brutality.  The problem is that police abuse is protected, unconditionally, resulting in either no or disproportionately low consequences for their actions. What results is that some naturally violent or naturally corrupt people will seek out police careers because it allows them to fulfill these desires without consequence. Again, this is a matter of policy, not accident.

The Consequences of Catholicism for Political Theory

There’s an endemic debate over what people are saying when they refer to ‘the west’. Is the west defined by its whiteness, its wealth, its liberal democracy? Should we call it the ‘highly developed countries’, the ‘advanced economies’, the ‘first world’, or the ‘global north’? I think most of these terms misses what is distinctive about this set of places. The countries we think of as ‘western’ are all countries where Catholicism was once dominant but is now in varying levels of retreat. Western countries are ‘post-Catholic’.

Catholicism has certain distinctive effects on a place. Crucially, Catholicism situates politics as subordinate to morality. In medieval Catholic states, the monarch derives authority from the pope or from divine right. This means the monarch’s legitimacy depends on the monarch having the right moral orientation. In other parts of the world, politics and morality were more heavily enmeshed. In the Byzantine Empire, the emperor was supreme in both religious and temporal matters. In the Islamic world, the caliph combined both political and religious authority. In China, different dynasties embraced and promoted the teachings of many different schools of thought at varying points. It was only in the Catholic west that politics and morality were firmly separated, with the former rendered clearly subordinate to the latter.

Are corporations now deriving their "authoriteh" from the rump "professional" class mediocrities comprising the diversity-inclusion-equity clergy? Can the ecclesiastical congregation of diversity-inclusion-equity offer absolution? Or merely economic cancellation...,

Given the weakness of post-Catholic morality - the only pervasive corporate values I see nowadays boil down to Overton's Window of permitted discourse - and - expected prompt and unquestioning compliance on the part of economically captured consumers. The pretend ethics of diversity-inclusion-equity have been quickly and none too subtly supplemented by "trust the science" indoctrination and compliance. If our corporate feudal lords can only police what we say or have ever said, that only scratches the surface of intended moral orthodoxy. If they can police what we do in ways that extend down to our genomes, then the post-Catholic corporatism has transcended the wildest fantasies of the pre-reformation Holy Roman Church.

The government can't police your intentions or your expressions or your behaviors anywhere near as well as corporations with amorphous community standards and big data, algorithms, and inexpensive filipino and south asian comment moderators.

Did you happen to see Warren Buffett's cousin and the diversity commander-in-chief peddling some highly suspect "trust the science" theocracy just last sunday on teevee? When everything's said and done, if we can't persuade you to comply, we've got some community standard digital passports coming your way here shortly so that you can show and prove your true belief in a way that the penitents of old never previously had to do in their confessionals...,

 

Saturday, March 20, 2021

The Vaccine Credential Initiative

Forbes  |  At a concert you usually come with your ticket, either electronic or physical, and stand ready to have it scanned. Now imagine going to that same show and, while someone is scanning your ticket, they also ask for your vaccine ID. So you pull it up on your phone and let them scan it, too, allowing the venue to verify you’re up to date on your Covid-19 vaccine. It’s only then that you are allowed to see the show.

This isn’t a far-fetched scenario. A group of businesses from the healthcare sector are banding together to create digital vaccine ID cards that verify Covid-19 vaccination status. In the future these cards, which can be stored on smartphones and other digital devices, may be required to gain entry into restaurants, bars, schools and airplanes. It’s a step that might be necessary in order to reopen the economy as quickly as possible. 

“Hopefully, we can quickly bring people who are vaccinated back into the workplace,” says Joan Harvey, president of care solutions at Evernorth. Evernorth is one of the groups working to develop these ID cards, along with Mitre, Cerner, Epic, Mayo Clinic, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce, The Commons Project and other major companies. Together they’re forming the Vaccination Credential Initiative, which plans to create an accessible, secure way to prove Covid-19 vaccination status. These SMART health cards will be an encrypted vaccine record that can be stored in any digital wallet. For those that don’t have smartphones, says Brian Anderson, chief digital health physician at Mitre, the vaccine records can “easily be stored on a paper QR code.” 

Though some of the companies that have joined the coalition have never worked together before, representatives say that they’ve been united by a desire to end the pandemic as soon as possible. For example, Cerner and Epic, two of the largest competing electronic medical records companies in the country, have both joined the coalition and are working together to create an ID card that will easily integrate with both of the company’s platforms.  “A pandemic has an incredible catalytic power to bring together nontraditional partners,” Anderson says, “partners that might otherwise be competitors.” And while the coalition is made up of companies from the private sector, they’re also working closely with the government, he adds.

Vaccine ID cards aren’t a new idea. Several countries already require proof of vaccination against diseases like yellow fever before travelers are allowed to enter. Even right now, healthcare workers who have gotten the Covid-19 vaccine have a white piece of paper that lists the date of vaccination. But vaccine ID cards like this “would be on a completely different scale,” says Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious disease physician. It could be the first time that proof of vaccination is required to do things that were previously mundane, like eat at a restaurant or go to work. Of course, Kuppalli says, “I think there are a lot of ethical issues that we have to think about before we go down this path.” 

R. Alta Charo, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, agrees that there are several ethical hurdles that could arise. While public and private entities could make proof of vaccination a condition of entry, she says, there will always be exceptions. “Private employers could make vaccination a general requirement for employees in at-will states,” she says, “but there would have to be exceptions for employees who are medically contraindicated, those who are disabled and unable to take the vaccine, and possibly for those with a religious objection.”

Sunday, January 31, 2021

What Becomes A Country Drained Of Its Economic LifeBlood?

deagel |  There have been many questions about the countries forecast specially the one focusing on the United States of America (USA). They won't be answered one by one but below you can find some explanation, thoughts and reflections. We are going to keep this as short as possible.

The majority of the economic and demographic data used in the making of the forecasts is widely available by institutions such as the CIA, IMF, UN, USG, etc. You can see the most relevant data at every single country's page. There is a tiny part of data coming from a variety of shadow sources such as Internet gurus, unsigned reports and others. But all these sources are from the internet and are of public domain for at least a minority. For example, several years ago Dagong, the Chinese ratings agency, published a report analyzing the physical economy of the States comparing it with those of China, Germany and Japan. The conclusion was that the US GDP was something between $5 to $10 trillion instead of $15 trillion as officially reported by the USG. We assume that the official data, especially economic, released by governments is fake, cooked or distorted in some degree. Historically it is well known that the former Soviet Union was making up fake statistics years before its collapse. Western as well as other countries are making up their numbers today to conceal their real state of affairs. We are sure that many people out there can find government statistics in their own countries that by their own personal experience are hard to believe or are so optimistic that may belong to a different country.

Despite the numeric data "quantity" there is a "quality" model which has not a direct translation into numeric data. The 2014 strain of Ebola has a death rate of 50-60% but try to imagine what would happen if there is a pandemic of Ebola with hundreds of thousands or millions infected with the virus. So far the few cases of Ebola-infected people have "enjoyed" intensive healthcare with anti-viral and breathing assistance but above all with abundant human support by Physicians and nurses. In a pandemic scenario that kind of healthcare won't be available for the overwhelming number of infected leading to a dramatic increase of the death rate due to the lack of proper healthcare. The "quality" factor is that the death rate could increase to 80-90% in a pandemic scenario from the stated 50-60% rate. The figure itself is not important what is relevant is the fact that the scenario can evolve beyond the initial conditions from a 50% death toll to more than 90%. By the way, no pandemic or nuclear war is included in the forecast.

The key element to understand the process that the USA will enter in the upcoming decade is migration. In the past, specially in the 20th century, the key factor that allowed the USA to rise to its colossus status was immigration with the benefits of a demographic expansion supporting the credit expansion and the brain drain from the rest of the world benefiting the States. The collapse of the Western financial system will wipe out the standard of living of its population while ending ponzi schemes such as the stock exchange and the pension funds. The population will be hit so badly by a full array of bubbles and ponzi schemes that the migration engine will start to work in reverse accelerating itself due to ripple effects thus leading to the demise of the States. This unseen situation for the States will develop itself in a cascade pattern with unprecedented and devastating effects for the economy. Jobs offshoring will surely end with many American Corporations relocating overseas thus becoming foreign Corporations!!!! We see a significant part of the American population migrating to Latin America and Asia while migration to Europe - suffering a similar illness - won't be relevant. Nevertheless the death toll will be horrible. Take into account that the Soviet Union's population was poorer than the Americans nowadays or even then. The ex-Soviets suffered during the following struggle in the 1990s with a significant death toll and the loss of national pride. Might we say "Twice the pride, double the fall"? Nope. The American standard of living is one of the highest, far more than double of the Soviets while having added a services economy that will be gone along with the financial system. When pensioners see their retirement disappear in front of their eyes and there are no servicing jobs you can imagine what is going to happen next. At least younger people can migrate. Never in human history were so many elders among the population. In past centuries people were lucky to get to their 30s or 40s. The American downfall is set to be far worse than the Soviet Union's one. A confluence of crisis with a devastating result.

The Demographic crisis in the former Soviet Union countries has extended for over two decades, if we accept that it ended early in this decade (2010s). The demographic crisis will hit the World in the near future and is projected to last between three and eight decades more or less depending on technological breakthrough and environmental issues. The aftermath is more likely a frozen picture with the population numbers staying the same for a very, very long period of time. The countries forecast population numbers do reflect birth/deaths but also migratory movements. Many countries are going to increase their gross population due to immigration while their native population may shrink.

Over the past two thousand years we have witnessed the Western civilization built around the Mediterranean Sea shifting to Northern Europe and then by the mid 20th century shifting to an Atlantic axis to finally get centered into the States in the past 30 years. The next move will see the civilization being centered in Asia with Russia and China on top. Historically a change in the economic paradigm has resulted in a death toll that is rarely highlighted by mainstream historians. When the transition from rural areas to large cities happened in Europe many people unable to accept the new paradigm killed themselves. They killed themselves by a psychological factor. This is not mainstream but it is true. A new crisis joins old, well known patterns with new ones.

Sorry to disappoint many of you with our forecast. It is getting worse and worse every year since the beginning of the pre-crisis in 2007. It is already said that this website is non-profit, built on spare time and we provide our information and services AS IS without further explanations and/or guarantees. We are not linked to any government in any way, shape or form. We are not a death or satanic cult or arms dealers as some BS is floating around the internet on this topic. Take into account that the forecast is nothing more than a model whether flawed or correct. It is not God's word or a magic device that allows to foresee the future.

Sunday, October 26th, 2014

Master Arbitrageur Nancy Pelosi Is At It Again....,

🇺🇸TUCKER: HOW DID NANCY PELOSI GET SO RICH? Tucker: "I have no clue at all how Nancy Pelosi is just so rich or how her stock picks ar...